would have fallen under King Ferdinand's rule, and then Rumania would probably have demanded and got in exchange more than a rectification of frontiers. As it has turned out, she bases her demand in that direction on other grounds, and, as regards the Kutzo-Vlach districts in Macedonia and Epirus, which have been occupied by the Servian and Greek armies, she pursues a more devious path. Unable to enforce her claims to those remote territories, she is endeavouring to have them included in the Albanian State actually in the making. Similar attempts at a union between the Albanian and the KutzoVlach elements, not unlikely inspired from Vienna, were made in the past by the Rumanian propaganda; and it was a favourite doctrine of Apostol Margharitis himself that the Kutzo-Vlachs and the Albanians were brotherraces the only legitimate descendants of the ancient 'Pelasgians,' and the rightful heirs of the lands which the Greeks and the Slavs had invaded as interlopers.

That serious Rumanian statesmen are actuated by puerile notions of this kind is inconceivable It seems far more probable that in adopting this policy they deliberately serve the diplomacy of their friend Austria. The Austro-Hungarian Empire hopes to have in the Albanian State of the future a lever wherewith to move the Balkan Peninsula, and for that reason it wishes to secure for that State the largest possible extent of territory. Rumania herself would also like to exercise some influence over Albanian affairs, if not for her own profit directly, at least for the profit of Vienna, in return for some gain the exact form of which it is, of course, impossible to define, but easy to conjecture. There are many Rumanian districts under Austro-Hungarian domination, and notably the contiguous region of Bukovina, a portion of Moldavia, annexed by the Hapsburgs in 1775.

Be that as it may, I, personally, although strongly in favour of an Albania big enough to maintain itself in dignity and independence, cannot help considering the attempt to mix up that question with so palpable à chimera as the Rumanian pretensions to the Kutzo-Vlachs a step calculated to weaken rather than to strengthen an otherwise perfectly genuine and legitimate cause.

G. F. ABBOTT.

Art. 10. THE PAST AND FUTURE OF RURAL ENGLAND.

1. The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields. By Gilbert Slater, D.Sc. London: Constable, 1907.

2. The Disappearance of the Small Landowner. By A. H. Johnson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909.

3. The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century. By R. H. Tawney. London: Longmans, 1912.

4. The Village Labourer. By J. L. and B. Hammond. London: Longmans, 1911.

5. English Farming; Past and Present. Prothero. London: Longmans, 1912.

By R. E. 6. Presidential Address to the Surveyors' Institution. By the Hon. E. G. Strutt. London, 1912.

7. A Pilgrimage of British Farming. By A. D. Hall, F.R.S. London: Times,' 1913.

8. Sugar Beet; Some Facts and Some Illusions. By 'Home Counties.' London: Cox, 1911.

At the beginning of a 'land campaign' we may be thankful that the general public is better informed than it was in regard to rural problems, and that there are increasing indications of a wish that some of these problems should be removed from the field of party politics. So long as seventy-eight out of every hundred persons in England and Wales live in the towns, legislation for the benefit of the countryside will be devised with an eye to the approval of urban as well as of rural voters. It is important, therefore, that the efforts which have been made to bring home to the people of the towns the outstanding facts of rural life and industry should be persisted in. A few years ago students of the rural problem had to deplore the fact that, for a history of the land worker, it was necessary to go to a volume, & meritorious volume, by a professor in a Prussian university. The reproach has been removed by a series of contributions to agricultural history of more than ordinary substance. It is a pleasing circumstance, sug gestive of the widening interest in the study of England outside the towns, that Mr Tawney's work should be dedicated to the Workers' Educational Association.

Undoubtedly Dr Slater did considerable service in making more generally known something of the story of open field cultivation and enclosure, principally in the 18th and 19th centuries. Mr Tawney, on completing his study of agricultural England in the 16th century, to which he hopes to return, sums up in regard to the enclosures of that time, as follows:

'We cannot therefore agree with those writers, who regard the decline in the position of the smaller landed classes, which took place in our period, as an inevitable step in economic progress, similar to the decay of one type of industry before the competition of another. If economic causes made a new system of farming profitable, it is none the less true that legal causes decided by whom the profits should be enjoyed.'

Mr Johnson, on the other hand, is certain that a change was inevitable if England was ever to advance out of the most primitive condition and methods of cultivation.' But the results were 'grave'; the small owner 'suffered in many ways'; there was a good deal of injustice.' At the same time the numbers of moderate-sized owners of land were in all probability increased.' Coming down to the 18th and 19th centuries, Mr Johnson's view is that in every way, both directly and indirectly, enclosures tended to divorce the poor man from the soil.' But, he believes, enclosure was not the sole or even the chief cause.' In his opinion, the worst that can be said of enclosure, whether of open fields or commons, is that 'sufficient care was not taken to secure better compensation.' Dr Slater puts his conclusion in a sentence: 'An increase of human life is attained at the expense of a degradation in its quality.'

The outstanding feature of Mr Johnson's pages is his contention that 'the changes since the middle of the 18th century have not been nearly so radical as they have been supposed to be.' He shows that, in some nonmanufacturing counties, there was, between 1772 and 1892, an actual increase of small owners. The evidence of the Land Tax Assessments, of which he has made such excellent use, also 'warns us not to exaggerate the monopoly of land in England to-day.' In 151 parishes of Oxon, Wilts, Kent and Hereford there were, in 1892, Vol. 218.-No. 435.

2 L

sixteen owners per parish. From other parts of the country different figures might be forthcoming, no doubt. But this is only to say, as Mr Johnson writes, that

'the small owner has survived where the circumstances were favourable. His disappearance has been due not so much to artificial as to natural circumstances, but the circumstances, political, social, and economical, have since the 17th century been against him. The political, and to some extent the social, have altered, but the economical remain the same.'

Mr Johnson is reminded of the declaration of the author of Pioneers of English Farming': 'Reduce population by one half, revive domestic industries, return commons and wastes to their former barrenness, make the farmer independent of manufactures, and the peasant proprietor may thrive. Mr Johnson adds sardonically, if he has Protection,' forgetting, perhaps, that Holland, where more than half the land is worked by the owners, is practically a Free-Trade country. But, say some enthusiasts of a peasant proprietary, there is France. Yes, says Mr Johnson, there is a France; but in France, after all, the small owner only flourishes in those districts in which the conditions are favourable to la petite culture: and the late break-up of the manorial system has been a contributory cause to the small man's survival. More over, may there not be seen in that country, besides Arthur Young's 'magic of property,' a deplorable thing which might be called the demon of property'? And is not the peasant proprietor there reported to be declining in numbers? The reply is, no doubt, that he will have to decline a good deal before the proportion of small owners is as low as that which exists in England: although in England there are undoubtedly a great many more small holdings, and small holdings that are owned, than might be supposed from some current polemics. The large proportion of ownership to tenancy in Holland, Belgium and Denmark, where the farming practice reaches a very high standard indeed, has unmistakably impressed the imagination of students of the rural problem in England. On the other hand, in his painstaking book on Belgium, Mr Seebohm Rowntree expresses the opinion that in that country, where a third of the land is cultivated by owners,

'the advantages which ownership gives, compared with tenancy, are unimportant, if reasonable security of tenure and adequate compensation for improvements can be provided for tenants. . . . We cannot hope. . . materially to improve the lot of the small agriculturist by the mere creation of a class of peasant proprietors.'

...

From careful enquiries of our own in Holland and Denmark, we are disposed to lay some stress on the degree to which ownership has survived or grown up in conditions in some respects peculiar to those countries, and on the difficulties and uncertainties which must attend any attempt to bring about a large increase of ownership where tenancy has many years of custom behind it. It is undoubtedly easy for people, who are not small holders themselves, unduly to idealise the attractiveness of owning land for cultivation. When

land is valued for commercial ends and not for æsthetic or sentimental considerations, and the man who works it has freedom of cultivation and security of tenure, at such a reasonable rent as has been secured in Denmark by many nominal tenants, he is able to set against the 'magic of property' the advantage of being able to move quickly to a larger or more convenient holding when his circumstances change. What of the lessons of the interesting Evesham custom '?* Ownership is undoubtedly the ideal arrangement. Every man likes to own land, to work his own land, and to feel the sense of independence which ownership gives; and a man will do things for his own land that he would not do for another's. It is also possible to see in an extension of ownership a defence against ill-considered Parliamentary action and a means of increasing national stability. On the other hand, are workers of the land under tenancies actually so much less conservative than agriculturists who own the land on which they labour? It is a matter for regret that the exceedingly complicated question of ownership versus tenancy should have become a party matter. No impartial mind can doubt that there are circumstances in which ownership may be the better plan and other

* For an explanation and interesting discussion of the Evesham custom, under which a tenant who wishes to realise his interest finds the incoming tenant himself, and strikes his bargain for tenant right with him direct, see Journal of the Farmers' Club,' March, 1913.